They’d returned to camp in worse shape than this. They’d even returned to camp in more bizarre shape than this. Most combat-deployed Contractors had more straightforwardly destructive powers, but weirdness simply came with the territory.

There had been those weeks they’d kept running up against a woman they’d been briefed on as a body-hopper but who turned out to make others switch bodies instead, for example. Various members of the team had had to have their bodies dragged back in restraints because the wild animals they’d swapped minds with kept trying to make their clumsy new human vessels run away or attack. Now that had been funny; grown men walking on all fours and trying to scratch behind their ears with their feet, talking monkeys trying to use spoons and getting their food everywhere, like toddlers. But did anybody laugh then? Nooooo. Everyone had been too worried about whether or not the effects were reversible then.

So Hei really didn’t see how getting floated in like a balloon on one of his own wires was such a source of hilarity now. He mowed his arms and legs wildly to at least try to get his ass pointing toward the ground instead of so very distinctly up, but with no help whatsoever from gravity, he wasn’t having much luck.

"Hey kid, what’s the weather like up there?" asked one of the human soldiers playing cards and laughing to his left.

"Nice tats, Tinker Bell!" said his fun friend.

Shooting that one his deadliest ‘I eat Contractors for breakfast so you wouldn’t even count as a snack’ look did not have the desired effect. Probably because of the brightly glowing blue hand print covering his face. And the ones scattered across his chest and back. And, Pai had ever so helpfully confirmed, smack dab on both of the cheeks of his ass. Was there anything more humiliating than losing to a Contractor in what amounted to nothing but a slap fight?

No, he decided. No there was not.

Pai kept walking, Hei floating over her head like her own personal rain cloud. There was a joke about thunderstorms there, and Hei would skewer every single person who made it, helplessly rolling in any direction but the one he wanted or not.

The cheers and catcalls of the group by the camp gates was already fading by the time he managed to flail and wobble himself into a mostly upright position. It was an improvement only until the next round of laughter started and someone coming up behind smacked him in the ass. With both hands. Aiming for the synchrotron radiation targets painted on his pants, no doubt.

With a yelp, Hei was sent spinning uncontrollably. Fucking again.

If this kept up he was going to puke, and then he’d really never live the day down.

"Pai!" he cried out.

His tether jerked, and then Pai caught his wrist and stabilized him, mercifully horizontal.

"Just hold onto my suit," she said, winding his wire around her arm until his belt was hovering just below shoulder height.

"You couldn’t have come up with that sooner?" he definitely did not whine.

"You couldn’t have thought of it yourself?"

Groaning, he buried his hands in the fabric of her uniform and his face in her neck. His stomach was still churning.

"Well hello there," a new voice said.

Hei groaned harder and refused to look up. Not now, Amber. Even on a good day, she could be worse than all his fellow humans combined.

"That’s a novel way to get around," she said, unperturbed. "What’s with the long face?"

"His element has betrayed him," Pai summed up, and carried him past the cloud of green hair in Hei’s peripheral vision without another word.

"Thanks," he mumbled, when she’d maneuvered him into the tent they shared and clipped the wire to his bedframe.

"Take a little, give a little, is what you always say, right?" she said serenely. "I think I owe you dinner too. Sit tight. Getting it all down here could take a while."